“What about Kevin?” I asked.
“I’ll go stay with Rich,” he offered.
“Colton,” Ronan interjected.
“Why him?” Kevin asked.
“He doesn’t know Foster.”
“Who is Colton?” I asked, stare shifting between the two of them.
“My friend. My best friend.”
I scrunched my brow. “How have I never heard of this best friend?”
I had known Ronan for years, and he and Kevin had been together just over a year. I had never heard the name Colton come up in conversation or in passing.
“He moved away,” Kevin said. “Shortly after I met Ronan.”
This was promising.
“Where did he move to?” I asked.
“Colorado.”
“That’s perfect,” I said.
“Excuse me?” Kevin’s eyes widened. “I know the two of you are not making decisions for me without asking.”
“Foster isn’t making any decisions for you,” Ronan said, “I am.”
“Thank you.” My shoulders sagged under the relief of knowing Kevin was going to be somewhere out of sight while I got this disaster sorted.
“Ronan.” Kevin jumped off the couch and Ronan silenced him with a tired look.
“We’ll talk about it when Foster leaves,” Ronan said, turning toward me with a sigh. “And you were just leaving, weren’t you?”
I’d never been dismissed by one of my friends before and it burned, but I knew it was fair. I’d put all of them at risk and I was asking everyone to uproot their lives. I rubbed my temples and nodded, the weight of the past week catching up with me at once.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Just leaving.”
“Let me know when this is finished,” Ronan said.
I nodded and let myself out, locking myself into my car and banging my head against the steering wheel. I didn’t know where to go, where to start. I’d never had to deal with this part of the process before. I was given an assignment and I carried out the assignment. I knew how to find people because I was told where they’d be. I knew what their habits were because I read them off a list.
I didn’t know how to figure out who wanted me dead if I couldn’t figure out who wanted Sage dead. He’d seemed sure it was his dad, but from what I’d been able to pull together, that didn’t seem likely. The Molinaro kid was at the top of my list, but I also wasn’t convinced he was the one pulling the strings.
He was young and ambitious, too far down the chain in his own family to ever amount to anything, so it made sense he would look elsewhere for power. Sage hadn’t shown any interest in following after his dad and he hadn’t made a secret of it. In fact, all of Sage’s vices were well known, matter of public record apparently. The fucking, the drinking, which explained how he’d been caught off-guard so easily by the guy who’d tried to take him out the first time.
Speaking of that.
I had a suspicion if I could figure out who the blond man was, I’d be able to track him to whoever was calling the shots with Anthony Molinaro, too.
I drove home in silence, letting the hours and the miles settle my mind. When I pulled into my driveway, I was feeling calmer than I had since Sage walked out my front door. Inside my house, the feeling remained and, for the first time in weeks, I felt like myself.
I needed to make a plan.
As I sat down in front of my laptop, my phone vibrated, the familiar beat of Sharp’s alert. I swiped the screen on and found a message with an address. An address in the valley.
